What is a device that connects a number of other devices and sends data to one specific device only?

The world of office IT can be a scary and intimidating one if you don’t understand the terminology. There is no shortage of complex machinery involved in the simple act of connecting people to the internet and to each other. But don’t be overwhelmed! Here’s a simple explanation of what each is and what functions they perform.

Table of Contents Show

Network Operating Systems Protection
Operating Systems Security
Human Actors & Process Handling

From MakeUseOf.com:

Hub

A hub connects multiple computers together in a Local Area Network (LAN). All information sent to the hub is then sent through each port to every device in the network.

Hubs are unable to tell one computer from another, so they receive information on one port and then blindly forward it to all other ports — whether it was intended for those computers or not.

So even though you may only want to send information to one other computer, if you have five total computers on your network, then there will be four other computers receiving data that wasn’t intended for them.

What Is It Good For?

In most home cases, nothing. Because all the information is copied to every device, not only is this a security nightmare but also its a bandwidth hog.

Imagine if you needed to print a document for your boss, but instead printed one copy of the document for every single employee using the only office printer. That’s the scenario you’re dealing with here.

Although it can be viewed as a security nightmare, if you want to keep an eye on network traffic to see if someone is spending their whole day searching for cat videos on YouTube rather than working, then hubs are a pretty good option.

Switch

A switch connects multiple computers together in a LAN. After the first data transfer, it creates a “switch table” which matches ports to connected devices by their MAC addresses.

Switches, unlike hubs, are able to differentiate between computers as the first time data passes through the switch, it looks to see which MAC addresses are connected to which ports and remembers the layout.

What Is It Good For?

Creating a LAN. Hubs used to be recommended for this because they were cheaper than switches, but switches are far superior as they minimize the traffic on a network, decrease bandwidth usage, and only send data to the intended computers.

For instance Computer A wants to send data to Computer C. The switch would see that Computer A is on port 1 while Computer C is on port 4. The switch can then send data directly between them, with the data arriving at port 1 and leaving the switch at port 4. This process hugely reduces bandwidth usage when compared to a hub.

Router

A router is a device that sends packets of data between different networks.

A packet is data which also contains the address of the destination. Routers use this destination address to send the packet between routers until it reaches its destination. This is how your LAN connects to the wider Internet. So when you enter a search term on Google, your router directs this packet to Google’s servers for processing.

Take mail as an example. If you want to send a letter to one of your housemates, you might just address it with “Room A”. But what happens if you want to send a letter to your best friend who lives in “Room A” of a different house? You would need more information to differentiate.

So you add a zip code. But they live in a different state, which you can’t easily get to. So you hand it over to your friendly mail carrier and using the address and zip code, the mail carrier will make sure it ends up at the correct destination, even if it means passing the letter over to a local mail carrier.

What Is It Good For?

Sending packets between two different networks is technically a router’s only job. However, modern routers actually include quite a lot more than that:

- 4-8 port switch for the LAN which enables local sharing of services like printers.
- Network Address Translator (NAT) used to assign one set of IP addresses within the LAN and one set outside the LAN to your ISP or a Wide Area Network (WAN).
- Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) which assigns IP addresses to each device connected to the LAN.
- Firewall to protect the LAN.
- WAN Port to connect the Router to a modem which provides broadband services from your Internet Service Provider (ISP).
- Wireless broadcast letting you connect devices without cables.

See? That simplified it pretty well! Now you know what your IT guy is talking about when he’s working on your network.

Great Lakes Computer Corporation technicians are experts in all of your IT hardware needs. If you still don’t know the difference between these things, and don’t care to, consider hiring us as a Managed Service provider for your computing, printing, and networking. We can monitor, maintain, and repair your hardware so it works the way you need it to, whether you know what it’s called or not.

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We currently face a growing IT security threat landscape. Therefore, organizations of all sizes need increasingly professional and threat-specific solutions for their IT security needs if they really want to stay protected. The cost of failing to do so can be enormous. As IBM’s 2022 Cost of Data Breach Report found, an average organization-level data breach this year cost $4.4 million. This is a 2.6% increase over what an average breach cost last year. In other words, for many organizations, particularly smaller ones, just one such incident can be catastrophic. The bottom line is that neglecting IT security is not a safe or wise business strategy.

Fortunately, help is available for any company or organization that wants to make their IT protection as robust as possible. This help takes several forms, each suited for different IT infrastructure segments. Let’s explore these and their possible solutions.

Network Operating Systems Protection

The network operating system (NOS) behind any organization connects all of its networked points. These include computers, tablets, payment terminals, and other devices, bundled into an internal network with its own user interface, software, and hardware.

Your organization’s NOS lets you manage user accounts on that network, control access to different nodes of the network, and manage communication or data transfer across those connected devices. This same network operating system is also a gold mine for hackers and cybercriminals. The fundamental reason is, once an attacker breaches any one of its endpoints (where the NOS connects to the wider internet and other networks), they can often use that access to hack multiple devices on your network.

Because NOS networks can be large and complex, securing their entire possible attack surface area can be very difficult if not done professionally. Fortunately, managed service and IT security provider Great Lakes Computer offers endpoint protection solutions. These are specifically designed to keep your network operating system’s many nodes carefully monitored for unauthorized use and protected against external breaches or infiltration. With Great Lakes Sentinel One endpoint protection, you can fortify your entire NOS against outside threats regardless of how complex it is.

Operating Systems Security

Inside your organization’s IT network and its network operating system, you will have multiple devices connected that each have their own operating system. As your employees use them, they will often have to stay connected to the wider internet for email, data downloads, and other work-related tasks. The devices themselves will also usually contain reams of extremely important organizational data.

Hackers trying to infiltrate your overall IT network and NOS will often take advantage of these individual machines and their specific web-connected operating systems to infiltrate specific devices or your whole network. To avoid these threats and to preserve the data, you need IT security that protects against threat vectors. These include email accounts and any possible source of unintentional malicious data downloads.

Great Lakes Computer’s above-mentioned Sentinel One endpoint protection offers part of the solution, but it’s even stronger if combined with email security solutions. These rigorously monitor the biggest sources of data breaches in the world today: your business email and application login accounts.

Human Actors & Process Handling

Your organization’s team of employees, consultants, and others with direct access to your IT network are all possible weak points for data breaches. They can find it difficult to keep up with daily cybersecurity procedures. This is normal among staff that aren’t specifically trained and qualified to handle IT security professionally.

However, it doesn’t mean that your staff can’t be trained to drastically reduce their chances of accidentally inviting hackers into your systems. While employee training should not be your only security solution, a robust effort to teach best practices can make a huge difference. It can at least reduce the number of threats your wider IT security measures have to protect against.

To help you achieve this, Great Lakes Computer offers comprehensive security awareness training as part of its cybersecurity compliance and penetration testing services. Through this course, you can teach your staff to avoid common IT security pitfalls in their daily operations and process handling operations.

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